Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage, in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard footsteps and looked over the gate.
"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had. Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the chair she offered her.
It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.
Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country.
"There was my mother first and then his, both at us. First one said, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then the other, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same. 'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.' Well, we did try, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all living, keep you on your feet."
"Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh, thinking of the house she had left.
"Trust 'em! that's what I say," returned Mrs Crowther. "Plenty of good, plain food, and plenty of good, warm, woollen underclothing, and there'll not go much wrong with their bodies, and trust 'em for their characters. I was talking to Mrs Hankworth the other day—she's done better than me, she's had twelve—'I never was one for much whipping,' she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give 'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work. It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go," said Mrs Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression, betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant tears. "You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut the door at night and know they're all inside with you; but there's a day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home, that if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
"Be thankful you've been spared the sorrow of one going astray," said
Anne. "It's a proud thing to have a lot of sons all honest, good men."
As if she had divined Anne's thoughts, or something in her words had suggested it to her, Mrs Crowther said suddenly—
"You've heard about that Burton getting hold of Jane Evans, have you?"